


Wash Away

by ScarTissue



Series: Its The Fallout That Gets You [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, TW: Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarTissue/pseuds/ScarTissue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's all shes meant to be in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wash Away

Emma was aware, in the back of her mind, that she didn't belong there.

  


Burgess was a nice enough place, of course. Quakers were a good, if backward people. The church wasn't that the terrible, the weather suited her fine, and she loved the family- no, her family. More than she ever loved anything. Or ever will.

  


She doesn't even go by her real name anymore. Emma Overland is inscribed in her heart, scarred so deeply into her that it will remain until her soul fades into the blackness at the end of time. She used to think long and hard about the real Emma Overland, the infant snatched from her cradle and was replaced by a changeling that took her face and name. She wonders if her parents threw her in that pond in the woods, if she was reincarnated or if her mother took her back to underhill. She tells herself it's irrelevant in the end.

  


She still wonders though, sat by the pond every year on her supposed birthday, staring at it almost guiltily. Jack said she looked like a statue, somehow frozen among the mud and reeds in the midsummer heat. She used to grin at him, that beautiful boy who suspected nothing, who walked straight up to her cradle the moment she first fussed, uncomfortable in the small and weak form, and crooned to her so sweetly. She fell asleep in his arms more than her own bed. She wouldn't take that away from her worst enemy. I was the safest place in the world, the best protector anyone could hope to have. But she did take it from someone.

  


Thats whats running through her mind on that damned day.

  


"This is what I get," she thought, frightened out of her mind and angry that Jack was trying to make light of the situation. "This is the price I have to pay." She can hear the ice cracking, and feel tiny, baby skeleton fingers wrapping around her legs and breaking the frost-

  


She doesn't fall.

  
  


         {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  
  


She can hear a child's laugh in the cold.

It spurns her on when Thomas starts screaming and won't stop, and she picked up a rock and bashed his head to keep him from jumping in after Jack. It follows her when drags him back home, and lays him in Jack's bed. It drives her to the medicine box, and the small lye bottle in the cabinet. Its still ringing in her ears when Catherine collapses from grief.

She saw her face in that ice, inverted and fractured. Her reflection was gleeful, phantom laughter echoing loud as Emma Overland took back what was really always hers.

 

  

 

          {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  
  


She gives Thomas a choice for his own sake, and one other reason.

Emma had other things to do  there. She had to take care of Catherine, her two friends, William Blackwell who would make her mother a good match (William was a lazy man, but not mean. Emma is, in the back of her mind, very grateful her father died before Jack. John Overland had been mean.). Emma can stay. But Thomas- Jack was his entire world. He was too hurt, to lost to go on without him. She was being merciful.

The other reason- well.

  


Emma had simply stood outside the little house when she left Thomas, listening hard. She knows what to listen for, the tell tale whoosh and light chuckle that accompanies it. All fae children hear this story, his story. Even her.

  


Pitch's eyebrows would be at his hairline, if he had any, when he sees her step in fifteen minutes later.

"I know you," he says lightly. "Or rather- I know what you are."

Emma just levels her eyes at him for a long moment. Hes standing just in the shadow next to the bed, watching Thomas closely. The boys skin is pale, and his hands are limp at his sides. His green eyes are closed, breathe coming shallowly. Pitch moves as if to stroke his inky hair, but stops short. He moves back to the darkest corner, and simply eyes her.

The moon is shining high through the window.

  


Emma draws a deep breath. Life is a gift. It comes with a price.

  


"I need your help."

  
  


           {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

  
  


"Why didn't you just leave him here?" Pitch questioned casually as she slid Thomas' body back onto the frozen pond. Emma isn't as exerted as a human girl should be, after dragging a almost grown man through the snow. She'll have to work on that.

  


"You wouldn't understand," she says, slipping back into fae speech patterns. She steps back from the ice and dusts off her woolen dress. Emma can't stop staring at it for a second, the brown fabric with red knit patterns. She'll miss this dress. "And I had to get you here, didn't I?"

  


Pitch looks appeased by that. "You're right. I probably wouldn't." The boogeyman walks onto the edge of the pond beside Thomas, whose chest is rising and falling less and less as the minutes pass. He conjures a short, iron knife from his cloak, and gestures to Emma as he kneels down next to the young man. She steps forward.

  


"Do you know what you're doing?" He asks, voice softer than a whisper. Emma looks him in the face and holds back surprise. The tone makes him sound... Mortal. His yellow eyes are soft too, as they bore into her stolen deep brown. He looks mortal too, in the dim night. Mortal and very, very tired. Emma thinks that maybe she doesn't, for one fraction of a moment. But she remembers how she got here, the underhill wars, the famine and shame of defeat. The humiliation of being so thoroughly whipped by your enemies that you are reduced to recuperating as a human child.

Shes walked a long road here.

  


Shes so tired.

  


So Emma nods and takes the knife, and slits Thomas' wrists, lets the blood flow into the cracks and the water. She draws the old runes in a half circle around her with the thick crimson liquid. Pitch watches silently as she slits one of her own, and shifts to sit cross legged on the ice. The cold helps a bit, numbs her. Summer was always her favorite though.

  


Emma turns the knife thrice in her hands. He took this from her mother's kitchen, she realizes. Emma learned to cook with this knife, pared and cut and even chased off a wild dog with it once. It has just as many memories as her dress, as the skates still lying on the ice. But it doesn't belong to her.

  


Emma can feel a warm, solid thing behind her, wrapping her in its limbs. She looks up at Pitch quizzically.

"You're the king of nightmares," she muses, "aren't you supposed to be a...discomforting presence?"

  


Pitch simply continues to shift her into his lap, trying to make her comfortable. Hes still got that soft look to him. "Maybe." He murmurs, stroking her pale face. "But you... Remind me of something. I don't know what." Emma accepts this. Every man has his past. She snuggles into his cloak, a surprisingly good scent to it, like wood smoke and the late nights in deep winter. She breathes in deeply and wraps her uninjured arm around his shoulder. Pitch trails a hand down her arm and fingers the knife she holds.

"May I... May I keep that?"

Emma looks down at the knife.

  


Its apart of a life she stole.

So she lets it slip out of her fingers, and goes limp in Pitch’s arms. The man is crooning to her in a different language now, so sweetly you'd think he loved her. Shes grateful for that, for a sure embrace and a lovely voice singing to her lowly. "Thank you." She whispers. Pitch stutters in his song, and holds her tighter, a strain to his voice. Emma's vision is going dark, and she can hear the quiet laughter again. The real Emma Overland is sitting across from her smiling sadly, but there is mirth in her eyes. She'd be happy as well, she supposes.

  


"Thank you, too." She echos back.

  


Pitch can't see the other girl, she knows. But before she can't see anymore, Emma squirms in Pitchs grasp and touches his face in return. She kisses his grey cheek. "Thank you," she repeats as she sinks down, and feels herself being washed away like the tide. Thats all shes meant to be in the end. The human girl's spirit holding her arm is fading into her hand, and washing her away.

"Thank you for giving this to me."

  


She stares back at Pitch, not unhappy hes the last thing she'll see. "Don't look so sad for a thief," she thinks, and is finally washed out to the sea.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Emma Overland wakes up the next morning, fitting into her skin like she had always thought she would.

She never sees the tall shadow that trails her the rest of her days.

**Author's Note:**

> More of my take on the Overland family  
> ......  
> I really couldn't help myself.


End file.
